


Birdi's Other Job

by TeaandBanjo



Category: Ms Fisher's MODern Murder Mysteries (TV)
Genre: Gen, carbon copies, manual typewriter, pun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21763096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaandBanjo/pseuds/TeaandBanjo
Summary: It seems that Birdi has a side job...she's an author.  Don't look for "Birnside" on the cover, though.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Birdi's Other Job

Samuel Birnside gripped the thick packet of mail. If Birdi wasn’t working on her motorcycle, and she wasn’t in the kitchen, and she wasn’t trying to fix the plumbing again…

He knocked on the heavy door of her study. The only question now was whether or not she was sulking…

“Come!” came the muffled voice through the oak.

Samuel turned the knob, and swung the door open, slowly. Birdi was at her typewriter, leaning over the blank page, head in her hands. One of her boots tapped rapidly against the floor.

“I’ll help you sort the bills,” he offered, waving the mail. “Then you can get back to what you were working on.”

“I’ll open them.” She straightened, and pulled a very sharp dagger from the pencil cup. “It will be a good distraction from Kirk Stone’s next adventure.”

“Going well?” he asked, backing away.

“No!” She fanned the envelopes on the desktop and precisely sliced off the flaps.

The knife went back with the pencils, and Sam relaxed. “I think one of them is from your agent.”

“I sent out ‘Beauty in the Bush’ a couple of weeks ago. Let’s see what happened to it.” Birdi’s fingers shuffled the envelopes like cards, and she pushed several back his way. “Pretty sure those are bills.”

“I wish Selene wrote stuff with happy endings,” he said. “You would think those would sell better.”

Birdi snorted and raised one eyebrow. “If only! That pen name only goes with the lesbian romances, and no publisher will touch a novel where _that_ ends happily. It is just not allowed.”

“Still,” muttered Samuel. “The characters are always such lovely people, and always deserve better.”

His sister smiled, leaning back against the desk. “If I tell you a secret, will you never tell another soul?”

“I promise!” He frowned. “Is it a thing I really need to know?”

“Absolutely not, but I’m going to show you anyway.” Birdi unlocked the giant file cabinet in the corner of the room, and rummaged in the bottom drawer.

His sister hauled an accordion folder over to the table under the window. She thumbed through the pages, and made two piles of typewritten pages.

“What is that?” Samuel stuffed the bills in his back pocket.

“This my first draft. You know I do the cut and paste from carbon copies, right? ...anyway, this is the last two chapters.” She gestured dramatically, as if she were producing a rabbit out of a hat.

Samuel cautiously thumbed through the papers. There were the expected number of spelling errors and sentences lined out. The heroine, Alice Blue, was having an extremely unpleasant nightmare about Zelle Green leaving her to get married to an unsuitable man. Then Alice received a telegram about Zelle dying in child birth, and then woke up to the sound of voices.

“But that’s not..” He tried to remember exactly what had happened in the draft that he read.

“Keep reading.” Birdi seemed to be suppressing laughter. 

The final chapter was about Alice, Zelle, and their adopted daughter managing their horse farm, and living happily together.

“That’s not the version I proof-read!” 

“No, it isn’t.” Birdi leaned against the windowsill, arms crossed and smiling like she always did when she’d successfully out-maneuvered someone.

“I read her dream was about the horse farm, then she wakes up in her tiny city flat, and re-reads the telegram about Zelle!” Samuel remembered reading about a lovely dream, and then the sensation of falling down the stairs as the story slowly revealed Zelle’s tragic end. With the additional detail that Zelle’s widowed husband wanted to Alice to come help him take care of Zelle’s baby.

“Sam, the first draft is the book I really want to write.” She stacked the papers, and tapped them to square up the stack. “Then I switch the horrible dream and the happy ending. So the publisher gets the tragedy, and my reader still gets to read the happy part. In a way, I hope some of my readers just decide to tear out the last chapter, but I don’t think anyone does.”

“They really won’t print a happy ending?”

“Nope.” She slid the draft copy back into the folder and wound the string to close it. “A happy ending would encourage the wrong sort of people. Which is ridiculous, but I don’t get to make those decisions.”

“Well, at least Selene’s books sell.”

“They do. However, I have promised another one of those spy novels for two months from now...Kirk Stone hasn’t put out anything new for over a year.” She waved at the typewriter and the blank paper curling out of it.

“What’s this one about?”

“I’m tired of writing Paris, and Prague. I want to have all the action up in the hills in Italy, but I’ve never been there, and don’t know Italian.” 

“Neither have most of your readers. Do they care?” He realized that the map on the wall was Italy, and the stack of library books included tourist guides and something titled “History of Italian Architecture.”

“I care. Do you think Violetta would help me with the scenery and some bits of dialogue? It’s really important to have the swearing right.” She flicked the return lever with her fingers, and watched it spring back.

“May I tell her who Kirk Stone actually is?” Samuel figured it was best to ask first, on this subject. 

“Swear her to secrecy, and see what she thinks of _Rue Danger, Rude Anger_. It needs to have more fistfights and spycraft than that one.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The sad history of lesbian romance novels (at least in America) included a requirement that said romances MUST end in tragedy. This didn't stop a lot of women from writing those novels, and didn't stop a lot of women from buying them and reading them.
> 
> I don't know what the situation was in 1963 Australia, but I'm assuming that there was still the requirement for tragedy.
> 
> Birdi also writes spy novels, and keeps the identity of "Kirk Stone" a very very secret secret.
> 
> (The bit with the carbon copies...I have no idea how writers used to do things, but "Cut and Paste" used to involve actual scissors and paste! Can you believe it?)


End file.
